


Kinda Like the Way He Dips

by thewriterofperfectdisasters



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Halloween parties, M/M, My Best Friend's Girl AU, Nat is such a bro, bc that's a thing, idek what this is???, im ashamed of this shitty title, or like it is now, post-serum Steve tho, shitty editing bc im giving a limited amount of fucks right now im so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 21:13:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8176265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewriterofperfectdisasters/pseuds/thewriterofperfectdisasters
Summary: ‘Jesus, Bucky, are you wearing a mesh tank top?’‘Like it?’‘You look ridiculous.’‘Excuse me, this was a serious part of my teenage angst, Nat. I wore these boots to school.’





	

**Author's Note:**

> so i was listening to 'my best friend's girl' by the cars earlier, and i'm like, you know what? this would make a great au. so here we are. _but then_ i remembered it's october! spoopy month! so i combined them. yolo. sorry if editing and general ending is shit (again) but i'm running on like 6 hours sleep and it's now past 2am and?? what is things??
> 
> title slightly altered from the song this fic came from.

Usually Bucky Barnes didn’t mind costume parties. He actually kind of enjoyed them, although he made it seem like it was very _reluctantly_ that he went and had fun at them. Sometimes, Bucky put actual effort into his outfit. Sometimes, Bucky wore really weird outfits (he was still regretting the day he drunkenly thought up the “hard-boiled egg” costume) but he only did that when he was pretty sure there was no one he wanted to bang at the party.

Bucky was okay being a free agent. He was still a little hung up on a guy he had dated for a while when he was sixteen, but then the guy had moved away and… well. They lost touch. He hadn’t had a serious relationship since, though an argument could be made that sixteen year olds never really had “real relationships” anyway.

It had only made him _slightly_ jealous when his best friend, Natasha, broke the news that she had been dating a guy for a while, and he would be coming to the Halloween party they were both attending that weekend.

Bucky didn’t want to come across like a complete dork to her new beau (even though he knew Nat could take care of herself, he still liked to intimidate her boyfriends a little, just in case they somehow didn’t believe that she could kick their ass) but he also knew he wouldn’t be banging anyone at that party.

He was aiming for a delicate balance of weird and awesome with the goth outfit, okay? Call it appropriation or whatever, but he had gone through a small goth phase when he was seventeen, so he just considered it going back to his roots a little, even if the phase had only lasted about six weeks.

He had attempted to spike the middle section of his hair up, and had gelled the rest down, going for… some kind of faux-hawk thing. He thought it was okay. (Natasha would no doubt correct him and say he looked ridiculous, but he was sticking with it anyway because it had taken him at least half an hour to get his hair vertical.)

Bucky had dug out some of his clothes from his goth phase, and was not surprised to find most of it no longer fit. Thankfully, the black, spiky platform boots did, and he could _probably_ wiggle into the leather trousers again. All his jewellery was still in good condition, so he added that to his bag of things to take home from his parents’ attic.

Now all he needed was a shirt.

   


* * *

  


Natasha had, of course, nearly choked on her drink when he walked in. ‘Jesus, Bucky, are you wearing a _mesh_ tank top?’

Bucky grinned, showing off the pair of fake, elongated canines he had picked up, and plucked the mesh from his skin, before letting it spring back. ‘Like it?’

‘You look ridiculous.’

‘Excuse me, this was a serious part of my teenage angst, Nat. I wore these boots to _school_.’

Natasha raised a brow as she eyed his boots. ‘Be careful not to stab someone with those. Was the black lipstick also a daily look?’

‘And the eyeliner. Good, huh?’

‘The eyeliner is very artfully smudged,’ she agreed.

‘Right?’ Bucky rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck, ignoring the surge of fear that shot through him when he had a bit of trouble getting his head upright again. ‘So where’s this mystical boyfriend of yours?’

‘Nat!’ someone called.

Natasha lit up, and _why did Bucky kind of know that voice?_

‘Steve!’ she greeted, going up on her tip toes to hug him and kiss his cheek. ‘Steve, this is Bucky, my best friend. Buck, Steve, my boyfriend.’

‘Bucky,’ Steve said slowly, holding out his hand to shake Bucky’s. ‘Have we met?’

‘Uhhhh…’ _Fuck._ The way his name sounded in Steve’s mouth was all too familiar. And the _name_. This was the guy Bucky had dated when he was sixteen. The one he still kind of loved. The fuck? ‘Steve.’

‘Steve,’ Steve agreed. ‘Bucky.’

‘Bucky.’ _Fuck._

‘Am I missing something here?’ Natasha asked, looking between them. ‘Do you know each other?’

‘Well…’ _Not really, we only lost our damn virginities to each other._ ‘I think we went to the same high school for a bit?’ Bucky asked, choosing his words carefully.

Steve nodded slowly. ‘When we were sixteen. I was there for a little over a year.’

_Shit, Steve remembered him._ And Bucky had chosen today to relive his goth phase. Jesus Christ. ‘Yeah,’ Bucky said, drawing it out. ‘Uh, excuse me.’

_Shit, shit, shit._ Bucky turned and headed away from Steve and Natasha. Anywhere away from them. Or, from Steve. Away from Steve. This couldn’t be real. The _one fucking guy_ Bucky had actually liked as more than a fuckbuddy was now dating his best friend. Not possible. What the fuck. Bucky glanced back, Nat in her Catwoman costume, and Steve as some sort of patriotic superhero, were watching him go. _Yep, definitely real._

Fuck. Bucky kept going, turning left into the hall he hoped the bathroom was tacked onto somewhere. He found it, glared at the two girls giggling in the mirror, and shut the door, locking it behind them as they swore at him for cutting short their selfie session.

Bucky gripped the edge of the sink, his knuckles turning white. ‘Shit,’ he muttered, looking up to his reflection. ‘I’m so fucked.’

‘Bucky?’ someone knocked on the door. Sounded like Sam. ‘You okay, man?’

Bucky took a deep breath and unlocked the door, hauling Sam in. He was dressed with his usual badass mechanical wings, saying it was an experimental take on special ops flight or something. ‘Problem.’

‘Huh?’ Sam frowned. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Big problem,’ Bucky hissed, pacing the limited space, and running his hands over his gelled flat hair. ‘Huge.’

‘What’s up? What can I do?’

Bucky groaned. ‘Nat’s new boyfriend?’

‘Steve? He seems nice. They said you knew each other and then you ran off?’

‘Jesus, Sam, we _dated_ ,’ Bucky hissed. ‘Me and Steve. We were sixteen.’

‘Wait…’ Sam held up a finger as he thought something over. ‘Didn’t you say you were, like, in _love_ with a guy when you were sixteen? Ruined you for anyone else?’

‘Yup, and he’s dating my best friend.’

‘You’re in love with Nat’s boyfriend?’ Sam shook his head. ‘Man, you’re so screwed. Why you like him so much? You were sixteen. Can’t have been such a life changing experi–’

‘We were each other’s firsts,’ Bucky said, cutting him off. ‘Okay? He was my first, I was his… We wanted to have something connect us forever, even if we never saw each other again.’

‘Wait, you mean…’

‘Yeah, Steve took my virginity. I took his. Whatever. We were both virgins, we banged, neither of us were virgins anymore. Get it?’

‘Oh, _damn_ , Bucky!’ Sam slapped him on the shoulder. ‘That’s hard, man.’

‘Ya think?’ Bucky asked, leaning against the sink and groaning again. ‘I’m over it. I’m over him. Why the fuck is this like this.’

‘Yeah, I mean, it was years ago, right? How many?’

‘Six.’

‘And it was a teenage fling.’

Bucky looked up, bitch face in full power. ‘Teenagers in love are still people in love, Sam. Might not know what the fuck they’re on about, but that doesn’t always invalidate their feelings.’

‘You’re right, I’m sorry,’ Sam paused. ‘But seriously, if Nat finds out about you and him…’

‘What if she already does?’

‘Huh?’

‘She’s my best friend, Sam. She’s not stupid. She knows I loved a guy when I was sixteen, he moved away, his name was Steve… she knows. She knows I never really got over it. She will have put the dots together.’

‘Good point. You wanna leave or face the music?’ Sam asked.

‘Gonna have to at some point, right?’

Sam shrugged. ‘I’m not saying Nat will break down the door to get to you if she thinks you’re avoiding her, but… she’ll break down the door if she thinks you’re avoiding her.’

‘I know,’ Bucky sighed. ‘Fuck. What do I do?’

‘Get over your residual feelings for Natasha’s boyfriend in the next twenty seconds?’

‘Great, thanks.’

‘Any time,’ Sam said cheerfully. ‘Ready?’

‘To die? I’m in the right outfit for it.’

‘That’s good, look at the positives in life!’ Sam opened the door and jerked his head towards the party. ‘Let’s go.’

Bucky nodded. ‘Okay.’

   


* * *

  


‘You good?’ Natasha asked, as Bucky and Sam approached her, Steve nowhere to be seen.

‘Yeah, he just had to take a dump,’ Sam said.

Bucky turned to stare at him. ‘Thanks, Sam.’

‘Any time.’

‘So, Steve,’ Natasha said, sipping her drink. ‘That’s your Steve.’

Bucky cleared his throat. ‘I mean, he’s not –’

‘He’s not my boyfriend, you know.’

‘He’s…’ Bucky blinked. ‘What?’

Sam coughed behind them. ‘I’m gonna go. I’ll see you later.’

‘Sam…’ Bucky whined.

Sam saluted him as he left. _You’re on your own!_ he mouthed.

Bucky flipped him off and turned back to Nat. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, I’m not stupid,’ Natasha sighed. ‘He never got over you, either.’

‘So… I’m still so confused, what’s going on?’

‘We decided to part ways and be friends,’ Natasha shrugged. ‘Now you two can go finish your stupid teenage love affair.’

‘You broke up with him? For me?’ Bucky asked, frowning. ‘I don’t…’

‘I remember how torn up you were about it,’ Natasha explained. ‘It’s not like I don’t have men throwing themselves at me, anyway. Steve is nice, I like him. But I know you have history with him, okay? I can let him go so you guys can be happy together.’

‘I haven’t seen him in six years, Nat.’

‘Can’t tell me you don’t still wonder _what if_.’

Bucky shrugged. ‘I mean… I think if he hadn’t moved, we would still be together.’

Natasha nodded. ‘Yeah, exactly, so why are you still standing here?’

‘Huh?’

‘He went to the kitchen for snacks, dumbass. Don’t let your dreams be dreams,’ Nat flexed her arms in front of herself. ‘Just… _do it!_ ’

Bucky rolled his eyes, but smiled, as he weighed up his options. Leave Steve alone, or go find Steve and see if they could make this work. Fuck it. ‘Kitchen?’

‘Kitchen.’

Bucky headed to the kitchen (taking care this time to make sure he didn’t accidentally impale someone on his shoes) and found Steve standing beside the bowl of Doritos, eating them slowly. ‘Hey.’

Steve looked up, dropping the last chip in his hand to his mouth. ‘Hey.’

‘So you remember me, huh.’

Steve nodded. ‘I’m sorry I had to move.’

Bucky shrugged. ‘Wasn’t your fault, Stevie.’

Steve smiled. ‘I forgot you used to call me that.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Bucky walked slowly towards him. ‘I missed you. Thought I’d never see you again.’

‘I know, me too.’

‘I guess… it’s been six years. We need to talk. Relearn things.’

Steve nodded, looking Bucky up and down briefly. ‘This is a good look on you.’

‘What, goth?’

‘Yeah, I like the mesh,’ Steve grinned. ‘Know where it would look better?’

‘I gotta feeling you’re gonna tell me.’

‘My floor.’

Bucky snorted. ‘Fuck, that’s such a bad line.’

‘Did it work?’

Bucky popped a Dorito in his mouth. ‘Yup. And we’re taking those.’

   


* * *

  


‘You’re taking the credit for this, aren’t you?’ Sam asked Natasha, as they watched Steve and Bucky slink out the front door, a bowl of something in their hands.

‘Hell yeah, I’m taking credit for this,’ Natasha said. ‘I dumped my boyfriend so my best friend could bang him.’

‘I can’t believe he’s still gonna get laid with his hair looking like that.’

‘I know right? It doesn’t suit him at _all._ ’

**Author's Note:**

> i've decided to do a set of spoopy month fics, so hmu on [tumblr](http://captainalgren.tumblr.com) with prompts for this series. i'm aiming for like... at least ten. and i have one more idea. so help a girl out lmao. 
> 
> ~~so we're all on the same page tho i won't be writing on the 21st bc it's my 21st bday and i won't have access to my laptop on the 22nd bc i have a 6:30am flight and probably not the 23rd bc i'm flying back down from up north at 9pm so i won't get home until like 11pm ugh ugh ugh worth it tho.~~


End file.
